Agnes Harben | |
---|---|
Born | Agnes Helen Bostock 15 September 1842 |
Died | 29 October 1961 |
Organization | United Suffragists |
Known for | suffragist leadership and international delegate for women Fabian Society |
Spouse | |
Children | 4, including Henry Eric Southey Harben |
Agnes Helen Harben (née Bostock; 15 September 1879 – 29 October 1961) was a British suffragist leader who also supported the militant suffragette hunger strikers, and was a founder of the United Suffragists.
Harben was born on 15 September 1879, at 7 North Street, Horsham, Sussex, [1] to Dr. Edward Ingram Bostock, J.P. (1842-1946) who later became chairman of the Horsham Urban District Council and Sarah Southey Bostock née Baker (1845-1920), and she was the fifth of eleven siblings: [2]
Agnes Bostock married Henry Devenish Harben (of Warnham Lodge [5] ) on 2 September 1899 at St. Mary's Church, [6] and later moved to Newland Park, Chalfont St. Peter (her husband inherited in 1910). [7] The Harbens had four children: Major Henry Eric Southey Harben (1900–1971) and County cricketer for Sussex;[ citation needed ] Edward (born 1901); Agnes Mary (born 1903) and Naomi (1907–1996). [8]
Harben was a member of the Fabian society, a socialist and internationalist debating society, which influenced the formation of the Labour movement. [9]
Harben and her husband supported the women's right to vote [10] [11] and moved in senior political and intellectual circles, for example dining on 6 February 1912 with Baron Cecil Harmsworth, a Liberal MP, [12] and entertained other political activists and writers e.g. Emmeline Pankhurst, George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and H. G. Wells. [7] Harben's husband was close to the Pankhursts and provided funding to the WSPU and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. [11] Although Harben herself was not imprisoned for militant action, she gave practical support, rather than denounce those women who did so, and raised money e.g. by an 'American Fair'. [13] The Harbens provided a home for Annie Kenney after one of her imprisonments, supported Rachel Barrett and many other suffragettes, released from prison to aid recovery from hunger strike and force-feeding. Harben's husband left the Liberal Party as a result of the policy and lack of action about this cruel treatment. [11] [14]
In autumn 1914, the Harbens' support for women released to recover before being re-arrested (under the 'Cat and Mouse Act' ) suddenly brought the 'county set' in contact with 'criminals' as philosopher C.E.M. Joad remarked:
"Suffragettes, let out of prison under the Cat and Mouse Act, used to go to Newlands to recuperate, before returning to prison for a fresh bout of torture. When the county called, as the county still did, it was embarrassed to find haggard-looking young women in dressing-gowns and djibbahs reclining on sofas in the Newlands drawing-room talking unashamedly about their prison experiences. This social clash of county and criminals at Newlands was an early example of the mixing of different social strata which the war was soon to make a familiar event in national life. At that time it was considered startling enough, and it required all the tact of Harben and his socially very competent wife to oil the wheels of tea-table intercourse, and to fill the embarrassed pauses which punctuated any attempt at conversation." [14]
In 1913, Agnes and her husband were delegates to the 7th Women's International League in Budapest, Hungary, with Harben representing the Fabians, [14] and in autumn 1915, to an international women's conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands to discuss peace, contrary to Millicent Fawcett and the NUWSS's position. [15]
On 13 February 1914, Harben became one of the founder committee [16] members of the United Suffragists which brought together militant and non-militant women and included men, like her husband, along with Louisa Garrett Anderson, H. J. Gillespie, Gerald Gould, Bessie Lansbury and George Lansbury, Mary Neal, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Julia Scurr and John Scurr, Evelyn Sharp, and Edith Ayrton; Louise Eates and Lena Ashwell also became members in 1914, and the organisation grew rapidly, and it took over the publishing of the weekly Votes for Women from the militant WSPU. [11] United Suffragists established active groups in Amersham, Stroud, Edinburgh and in by-election campaigns in Poplar and Bethnal Green. [11]
United Suffragist colours were purple, white and orange used in banners for suffrage events and processions, but their activity extended to clubs for working women in Southwark and grew across the country as they took members from WPSU and NUWSS e.g. in Birmingham and Portsmouth. On the achievement of (some) women's right to vote, via the Representation of the People Act 1918, the United Suffragists held major celebration events with NUWSS on 13 March 1918, and their own event on16 March 1918, presenting their Votes for Women editor, Evelyn Sharp with a book signed by the members (Note: it is not known, but highly likely that Harben signed it). [11]
In 1915, Harben attending the International Women's Suffrage Alliance helped to establish the Women's International League of Great Britain with Sylvia Pankhurst, Mary Sheepshanks, Charlotte Despard, Helen Crawfurd, Mary Barbour, Agnes Dollan, Ethel Snowden, Ellen Wilkinson, Margery Corbett-Ashby, Selina Cooper, Helena Swanwick, Olive Schreiner. [15]
Harben later joined the League of Rights for Soldiers and Sailors Wives and Relatives with others including George and Bessie Lansbury. [11]
Harben died on 29 October 1961, in the Jersey parish of St. Saviour. [17]
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom from 1903 to 1918. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and policies were tightly controlled by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Sylvia was eventually expelled.
Gerald Gould was an English writer, known as a journalist and reviewer, essayist and poet.
Helena Maria Lucy Swanwick CH was a British feminist and pacifist. Her autobiography, I Have Been Young (1935), gives a remarkable account of the non-militant women's suffrage campaign in the UK and of anti-war campaigning during the First World War, together with philosophical discussions of non-violence.
The National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), also known as the suffragists was an organisation founded in 1897 of women's suffrage societies around the United Kingdom. In 1919 it was renamed the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship.
Ann "Annie" Kenney was an English working-class suffragette and socialist feminist who became a leading figure in the Women's Social and Political Union. She co-founded its first branch in London with Minnie Baldock. Kenney attracted the attention of the press and public in 1905 when she and Christabel Pankhurst were imprisoned for several days for assault and obstruction related to the questioning of Sir Edward Grey at a Liberal rally in Manchester on the issue of votes for women. The incident is credited with inaugurating a new phase in the struggle for women's suffrage in the UK with the adoption of militant tactics. Annie had friendships with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence, Mary Blathwayt, Clara Codd, Adela Pankhurst, and Christabel Pankhurst.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence was a British women's rights activist and suffragette.
The United Procession of Women, or Mud March as it became known, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in which more than 3,000 women marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in support of women's suffrage. Women from all classes participated in what was the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen until then. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather since incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-spattered.
A movement to fight for women's right to vote in the United Kingdom finally succeeded through acts of Parliament in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Louisa Garrett Anderson, CBE was a medical pioneer, a member of the Women's Social and Political Union, a suffragette, and social reformer. She was the daughter of the founding medical pioneer Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, whose biography she wrote in 1939.
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, derived from suffragist, in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU.
Evelyn Jane Sharp was a pacifist and writer who was a key figure in two major British women's suffrage societies, the militant Women's Social and Political Union and the United Suffragists. She helped found the latter and became editor of Votes for Women during the First World War. She was twice imprisoned and became a tax resister. An established author who had published in The Yellow Book, she was especially well known for her children's fiction.
The Open Christmas Letter was a public message for peace addressed "To the Women of Germany and Austria", signed by a group of 101 British suffragists at the end of 1914 as the first Christmas of the First World War approached. The Open Christmas Letter was written in acknowledgment of the mounting horror of modern war and as a direct response to letters written to American feminist Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), by a small group of German women's rights activists. Published in January 1915 in Jus Suffragii, the journal of the IWSA, the Open Christmas Letter was answered two months later by a group of 155 prominent German and Austrian women who were pacifists. The exchange of letters between women of nations at war helped promote the aims of peace, and helped prevent the fracturing of the unity which lay in the common goal they shared, suffrage for women.
Henry Devenish Harben was a British barrister and Liberal Party politician who later joined the Labour Party. He was a notable supporter of women's suffrage.
The United Suffragists was a women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.
Julia Scurr was a British politician and suffragette.
Mary Elizabeth Phillips was an English suffragette, feminist and socialist. She was the longest prison serving suffragette. She worked for Christabel Pankhurst but was sacked; she then worked for Sylvia Pankhurst as Mary Pederson or Mary Paterson. In later life she supported women's and children's organisations.
Edith Chaplin Ayrton Zangwill was a British author and activist. She helped form the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage.
The statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, honours the British suffragist leader and social campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett. It was made in 2018 by Gillian Wearing. Following a campaign and petition by the activist Caroline Criado Perez, the statue's creation was endorsed by both the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. The statue, Parliament Square's first monument to a woman and also its first sculpture by a woman, was funded through the government's Centenary Fund, which marks 100 years since some women won the right to vote. The memorial was unveiled on 24 April 2018.
Edith Hudson was a British nurse and suffragette. She was an active member of the Edinburgh branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and was arrested several times for her part in their protests in Scotland and London. She engaged in hunger strikes while in prison and was forcibly fed. She was released after the last of these strikes under the so-called Cat and Mouse Act. Hudson was awarded a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by the WSPU.
The Historiography of the Suffragette Campaign deals with the various ways Suffragettes are depicted, analysed and debated within historical accounts of their role in the campaign for women's suffrage in early 20th century Britain.
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